25 DIFFERENT HISTORICAL PHOTOS
Reading about historical events helps us remember the past and honor those who have paved the way for us. Seeing fragments of history, however, through photography or film, provokes emotions of a different degree.
You can read about the horrors of war but seeing it is different. You can read about how famous Picasso was but seeing his face and how he stands is different.
Photographs are key pieces to connecting us to the past in a future-obsessed world; they remind us that today's privileges are more recent than we think and that our parents, as well as our grandparents, are far stronger and far more interesting than we could ever know.
Below you will find 25 rare history photos that document how the world looked like between 1890-1995.
#1. 1890-1920: Two women exchanging hongi, a traditional Maori greeting in New Zealand.
#2. February 4,1912: Franz Reichelt wearing a parachute of his own design just before his fatal jump from the Eiffel Tower.
#3. 1912: English Boy Scouts start a disaster fund following the fate of the Titanic.
#4. 1919: Sandwiches for sale on a Model T, an early 'food truck'.
#5. December 1920: Men posing for a 'selfie' at St. Patrick's Cathedral.
#6. December 2, 1931: This Anti-Hitler demonstration at the Berlin Sportpalast was organized by the Republican Reichsbanner, a group that opposed internal subversion and extremism, right and left, in favor of parliamentary democracy.
#7. 1930: Samurai reenactors, young and old, march at a ceremony in Japan between the two World Wars.
#8. 1939: A woman cries by her children after the refugees on the St. Louis were denied entry into the U.S. The family was among over 900 passengers, Jews fleeing the Third Reich. The ship returned to Europe on June 6, 1939 with some passengers gaining entry into Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.
#9. 1943: The last photo taken of Serbian American engineer and physicist, Nikola Tesla.
#10. June 1943: Japanese American soldiers of the 442nd Combat Team attend a dance at Camp Shelby, Mississippi.
#11. 1945: Wedding rings collected from WWII concentration camps.
#12. April 9, 1945: A young Polish boy enjoying his first meal (US Army rations) after American forces liberated his concentration camp. His sub-camp (of Buchenwald), Eisenach, required inmates to produce military equipment for BMW.
#13. 1948: A dedicated Macy's department store employee cleaning up after the Christmas shopping rush.
#14. June 2, 1953: Queen Elizabeth II flashes a bright smile for her coronation portrait. A portrait with a more serious expression was chosen as the official photo instead.
#15. 1956: Actress Brigitte Bardot meets Cubist painter Pablo Picasso at his home in Vallauris. Bardot was in town to attend the Cannes Film Festival nearby.
#16. 1957: A black couple finds graffiti at the front of their home. They had moved into an all-white neighborhood in Chicago.
#17. 1961: A prototype of a space suit designed at the University of California, Los Angeles.
#18. September 19, 1961: 8-year-old, Billy Stanley, was the only white student in his third grade class at St. Philip the Apostle's School in Albany, New York. Billy noted that the other students, treat me good.
#19. 1965: Huynh Thanh My, an Associated Press photographer, in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. He died a month later on October 10, 1965. His younger brother, Nick Ut, was famous for the iconic photo of children fleeing napalm bombing during the war.
#20. 1968: Norwell Roberts, Norwell Gumbs at the time, directing traffic as the first black policeman in Britain.
#21. September 10, 1973: Elvis and Priscilla Presley walk out of court following their divorce.
#22. May 27, 1976: Mao Zedong meets Pakistani Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in his final public appearance.
#23. 1979: When Dan White received a verdict of voluntary manslaughter for killing openly gay politician Harvey Milk, thousands rioted in protest. Pictured here are gay men smashing the windows of San Francisco City Hall.
#24. June 15, 1995: OJ Simpson showing the jury that If [the gloves don't] fit, you must acquit in the case of Nicole Brown.
#25. October 22, 1995: Protestors set an American flag on fire and demand the closure of the U.S. military base in Okinawa where three U.S. servicemen abducted, beat, and raped a 12-year-old Japanese girl. The men served terms in Japanese prisons and were released by 2003.